Polish and German Jewish Civil Death Certificates, 1941-1945

Background

This database consists of death certificates for Jews, primarily Polish Jews, who perished between 1941 and 1943, mostly in those areas of Western Poland what were annexed by Germany in World War II.  It also identifies Jews who died in Germany, e.g. in Berlin, who did not have German citizenship, as well as a few persons from other countries.  None of these persons died in concentration camps and the certificates were issued in the normal civil registry process, with copies sent to Berlin.  During World War II document collections were often shipped from Berlin for safekeeping and these ended up in the Opole archives.

The information on each certificate includes family, maiden and given names as well as dates and places of birth and death.  They also include marital status but I have not entered that information.  It should be noted that the first location column is place of death, not birth, and researchers might wish to switch the columns if the information is to be merged with other databases.

I included the names of Germans who did NOT have German citizenship, even though many were born in Germany on the assumption that many of these names would NOT appear in the Residentenliste and this turned out to be the case.  I omitted about 1,000 names of Jews WITH German citizenship on the assumption that these WOULD appear in the Residentenliste.  However, unfortunately, this was often not the case and I may go back and include these names.  Of course, none of these names appear in the Gedenkbuch since they are not considered Holocaust victims.

The entire collection is held at the Archiwum Panstwowe w Opole (Opole archives) and can be accessed at http://robertbachara.com/bazaaptest.  Please always check this original database if you intend to utilize information on individuals.

Database

This database includes 2,118 records of Polish and German Jewish civil death certificates issued between 1941 and 1945.

The fields for this database are as follows:

• Name — Family Name, Given Name, Maiden Name
• Date of Birth
• Place of Birth
• Date of Death
• Place of Death

Acknowledgments

The information contained in this database was indexed from the files available from the Archiwum Panstwowe w Opole (Opole archives) and can be accessed at http://robertbachara.com/bazaaptest.  Peter Landé compiled the list.

In addition, thanks to JewishGen Inc. for providing the website and database expertise to make this database accessible.  Special thanks to Warren Blatt and Michael Tobias for their continued contributions to Jewish genealogy.  Particular thanks to Nolan Altman, coordinator of Holocaust files.

Nolan Altman
May 2015

Searching the Database

This database is searchable via JewishGen's Holocaust Database.